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ils aware of the existence of all protected characteristics” in the 2010 Equality Act by the time they leave primary school.

It went on to ask if primary schools would be marked as “requires improvement” or “inadequate” – the lowest grades in Ofsted inspections – if children were not made aware of “specifically, sexual orientation and gender reassignment”.

In their response, Ofsted defended their guidance for inspectors and said staff were alert to homophobic or transphobic bullying. 

The revelation comes days after Liz Truss, the equalities minister, urged Whitehall departments to cut ties with the controversial charity’s Diversity Champions Scheme, which sees 250 public bodies pay thousands for equality training that barristers claim “misrepresents” the law.

Ofsted is among a growing number of major employers, including the equalities watchdog, who have quit the programme in recent months.

Transphobic bullying must be a huge concern in primary schools. No wonder Stonewall are so concerned.

In the email to Ofsted, seen by The Telegraph, Stonewall’s director of education and youth wrote: “We know that some students who are bullied (for whatever reason) do not disclose this to teachers, so it is difficult to envisage how inspectors could make assessments on whether homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying is prevalent in schools, without being able to speak to pupils about all protected characteristics.”

And biphobic bullying, of course. I forgot biphobic bullying. 

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With a young Levon Helm on drums.

Born and raised in Arkansas, Hawkins moved to Ontario in 1964, with the original band members, apart from Helm, leaving to be replaced by Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson – who went on to back Dylan when he went electric, hang out in Woodstock, and become The Band.

More early Hawk (looking and sounding like Johnny Burnette) – Mary Lou.

-image at-xid-6a00d83451ebab69e20282e1066e18200b img-responsive” src=”http://mickhartley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mt_imported_image_1758326625.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”Petrillo” />

Might his considerable male advantage in size and strength help in any way? Well, he's legit according to the IOC guidelines, so the moaners can kiss his arse.

"As a sportsperson, to accept that you won't go as fast as before is difficult. I had to accept this compromise, because it is a compromise, for my happiness."

It has become Petrillo's motto: "Better to be a slow happy woman than a fast unhappy man."

In reality, she is not slow, just slower, as her gold medals in last September's Italian Paralympics championships attest.

Yep – he's winning again. Which means real biological women, who train hard to compete, don't win. But he's happy, which is what really matters.

And there's an inspiring film to look forward to:

She describes her life today as a visually impaired transgender athlete as an arduous journey that is far from over, but she is keen to share her story. But he's happy – which is all that matters.

"I think my example is positive, of a trans person who does a sport they love," she says. "Maybe if I'd seen a Valentina on TV when I was an adolescent, my choices would have been different."

This is why she agreed to have her story fully documented on film – 5 Nanomoles: The Olympic dream of a trans woman will be released next year. She says making the documentary has helped her to get through some of the darkest moments of her journey, and surprised her too.

"Valentina is enjoying making this film! She really is and I'd never have imagined it. This is another thing that Fabrizio would never have done: Fabrizio would never have spoken on TV, or given interviews, or put himself out there. But Valentina does."

Update: from Graham Linehan – The BBC, still grooming for Stonewall.

=”padding-left: 40px”>Advice to those applying – more than 500 in the last year – includes ditching all gendered language outlawing single sex toilets and changing rooms.

Employers are urged to add gender pronouns to all email signatures, and even run a “rainbow laces campaign”. Whitehall is already under pressure to quit the charity’s Diversity Champions scheme, with equalities minister Liz Truss telling departments that they should not be paying the £2,500 membership fee.

The scheme provides guidance and training on how to be inclusive and offers perks including a free review of all HR policies by Stonewall. But legal experts have warned the 850 employers who have signed up, including around 250 Government departments and public bodies, that the charity is “misrepresenting” equality law.

Correspondence released under FOI laws shows that the charity informed Historic England that it is a “legal right” for an individual to “use the facility that corresponds with their gender identity”.

But that ain't so.

The 2010 Equality Act says single-sex facilities and services are allowed, if shown to be “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”, such as privacy in women’s changing rooms and refuges.

Naomi Cunningham, a barrister specialising in discrimination, warned: “They are misrepresenting the contents of the Equality Act… But public authorities are believing it and because of that they're finding themselves in breach of the law. So it's a real trap.

“The obsessive focus on this tiny, tiny proportion of any given workforce is unbalancing, and it does mean that there is a strong likelihood that as employers sign up to Stonewall programmes, there will be equality impacts for other protected groups, particularly women but also religious groups.”

Stonewall have, in fact, pulled off one of the most extraordinary cons of recent times, by piggy-backing on the feel-good progressive vibes generated by the success of gay liberation, and all that powerful Pride rainbow-coloured emotion, to advance an absurd irrational and misogynistic ideology:

Amanda Jones, a barrister at Great Street Chambers specialising in equality laws, said that its training was “misleading”, particularly around the law on the provision of single-sex spaces. Stonewall is currently lobbying for the removal of the single-sex exemption from the law.

“What stands out in general is the extraordinary willingness of many organisations to pay through the nose to be lectured and condescended to. Paying people to lobby you is a new and impressive development,” Ms Jones told The Telegraph.

y defined as outlaws, members neither of the department nor of a discipline collectively committed to anti-Zionism.

No dissent allowed, I'm afraid.

No doubt Judith Butler – "Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important" – will be in full agreement with her gender studies comrades.

t: 40px”>And this clearly encroaches on the spaces that, for important reasons, women have fought hard to establish. For centuries, women have campaigned against discrimination that flowed from the reality of their biology.

It has always been women who populate domestic-violence refuges. It is women who have died because of botched backstreet abortions or from ritual genital mutilation.

Denying this is absurd. But it is what Stonewall is asking us to do: to accept without discussion that trans people are no different from someone who was born a certain sex.

Denying biology, in other words. That's what we're being asked to do.

Meanwhile, in Vienna:

A 19-year-old Austrian student who was attacked and insulted as a “Jewish slut” and “child murderer” for reading a book about Jews has said she was told by police that she had been acting provocatively.

The student, who has not been named, was reading the book The Jews in the modern world for a Jewish studies course on the Vienna underground system when she was insulted by three men and had her hair pulled.

“I was able to free myself and ran out at Stephansplatz,” she told the Austrian radio station Ö1. When she reached the street she said she approached two police officers, whose first reaction was to ask: “Why do you have to read such a book now in this conflict situation?” in apparent reference to the flare-up in violence between Palestinians and Israelis in May.

The student said the officers suggested that reading the book was provocative and that the attack could not be antisemitic because she was not Jewish. When she asked them what else she could do, they told her to “forget about it” and not bother going to a police station…

In a further complication to the Allison Bailey-Stonewall situation, it turns out that trans activist group Mermaids, and possibly Stonewall, are fighting back by lodging an appeal against the Charity Commission’s decision to award Bailey's group the LGB Alliance charitable status.

Dennis Kavanagh – Extraordinary legal spectacle in Pride month as multi-million pound trans focused charities try to silence the only LGB charity:

The public campaign against the LGB Alliance by established trans-focused charities Stonewall and Mermaids escalated into litigation today with an appeal against the Charity Commission’s decision to award the LGBA charitable status…. This follows ferocious objections from the groups to the initial application for registration and a campaign of well publicised subsequent complaints to the commission itself by supporters of both charities, (many of which were dismissed as “emotional”). It seems then that 2021 Pride month will set the stage for an extraordinary legal spectacle of large, multi-million pound trans focused charities seeking to silence and effectively destroy a lesbian/gay/bisexual focused one. […]

The grounds themselves rehearse a number of complaints already dealt with by the Charity Commission and so the appeal, to some extent, represents an attempt at having a second bite of the cherry. Perhaps most strikingly, the grounds appear to claim that anything other than complete agreement with the gender identity position is in and of itself a de facto attack on trans focused charities. The grounds specifically complain that Bev Jackson [co-founder of the LGB Alliance] said in March 2020 “We’re applying for charitable status and building an organisation to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity”. The complaint that this speech is enough to make good the objection may be extremely difficult to establish in law given recent the statements by EHRC chair, Baroness Falkner to the effect that a gender critical position is a protected characteristic and the fact the body recently intervened in the Maya Forstater Appeal Case to protect extremely similar speech and thought.

The core of the complaint appears to be that any dissent from a belief in gender identity is political in nature and therefore outside the objectives of a charity. Logically this may be a difficult argument to pursue as it is based on the premise that one side of a discussion is political, but the contrary Stonewall/Mermaids position is somehow above politics or reasoned discussion.

As the piece goes on to say, it's not quite clear if Stonewall are involved or not. Perhaps it was decided that with all the bad press they've been receiving it might be better to underplay their involvement. Not that Mermaids are any better….

The view from across the river round North Greenwich:

The buildings keep going up. Over the past year or so since I was last down here the main change has been at Wood Wharf, to the east of Canary Wharf, which has shot up. Nothing outstanding architecturally though, I'd have to say, beyond the usual glass and steel….

y and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed in April is in fact a belief that's protected by law. So things aren't going Stonewall's way:

Liz Truss, the women and equalities Minister, told officials she does not think that Whitehall departments should be signed up to the programme, which costs around £2,500 a year and gives employers access to resources to make them more “inclusive”.

Membership of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme gives companies training about pronouns and gender-neutral spaces and helps to qualify for the LGBTQ charity’s workplace equality index.

The EHRC, the House of Commons, Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Acas, the employment dispute service, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government opted out of the scheme as early as 2019.

It has now emerged that Channel 4 has become the latest public body to cancel its membership of the scheme.

A Stonewall spokesperson said: “We strongly refute any suggestion that we instructed Garden Court Chambers to investigate or take action against Allison Bailey, and believe these allegations are baseless”.

A spokesperson for Garden Court Chambers added: “We will not be commenting on an ongoing case other than to say that we refute the claims made against us and will continue to strongly contest them.”

They deserve to lose just for misusing "refute" like that. "We strongly reject…" perhaps. Or "We will strongly attempt to refute…"

Last word to Allison Bailey, in the Times:

Bailey, who is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants and was called to the Bar in 2001, said that “new trans activism operated a crude but effective system of punishment and reward: agree with every demand of the trans lobby and be safe; object and face vilification, abuse, boycott, character assassination and cancellation”.

Bailey described the view that “trans women are women” and “trans rights are human rights” as the “mantras” of trans activism. “The new trans activists are joined by politicians, journalists, lawyers, writers, entire organisations and assorted celebrities, in the chanting of these mantras to shut down debate,” she said: “While others who are appalled at what they see happening are too afraid to speak out. It is cult-like behaviour, it is Orwellian and it has disgraced and shamed a generation.”